To kick things off, we’ve added some of the most popular new markets to your Sharesight account. Just login and add a new holding. In the Market dropdown menu you’ll see options for the Euronext, the three Canadian exchanges, and the Hong Kong stock exchange.

We’re on standby and have more markets ready to be deployed - and we’ll do so based on client demand. If you’d like to access an exchange, please navigate to the Help tab within Sharesight to get in touch or post on our customer forum.

Finally, Sharesight will convert price and dividend data back to your portfolio’s local currency so no need to worry about exchange rates.

Don’t Forget Your Passport

Back to our first point above, home country bias has plagued retail investors for years, especially in countries with deep capital markets like the US and Australia. But that’s beginning to change as investors demand exposure to global sharemarkets - and we’re seeing demand for a multitude of global stock markets. Most notably northern Asia and Europe, alongside Canada.

Studies show that American investors are hopelessly skewed towards their own backyard, but they’re lucky - many American companies derive the bulk of their revenues from overseas, and most large international firms are listed on US domestic markets anyway, thereby giving the American investor a fairly diversified portfolio.

Now, if you’re an Aussie investor, chances are you’re well aware of your (over?) exposure to banks and resources. But to date the average retail investor hasn’t had a choice short of ridiculous $100 overseas trading fees. The huge growth in ETF inflows is partly a result of investors seeking overseas exposure. Even it if they’re passive, ETFs are cheap are exchange traded.

Today, nearly 20% of our Australian-based portfolios contain overseas shares and a full 75% of Kiwi investors own overseas companies (a big chunk are ASX companies to be sure, with BHP being the 10th most popular holding by New Zealand-based investors).

For example, you can now trade international shares on CMC Markets or Saxo Capital Markets for as little as 2 cents per share.

Tech companies gravitate towards old-school industries with fat margins. Just as fintech companies are disrupting the payments industry, we expect foreign online brokers to do the same for international brokerage. Bring it on!